Tyson destroying flu-tainted hens

Little Rock, Ark.

Tyson Foods has started killing and burying the carcasses of 15,000 hens from a flock that tested positive for exposure to a strain of the bird flu in Northwest Arkansas, state officials said Tuesday.

Tyson said preliminary tests on the flock in West Fork indicated the presence of antibodies for H7N3, a less virulent strain. Routine blood tests Friday found the possible exposure, said Jon Fitch, director of the state's Livestock and Poultry Commission. Further tests found the birds did not have active infections.

The strain that ravaged Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 was the H5N1 virus. That version has killed 240 people worldwide and scientists worry it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people.

Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Kibo is hooked up to its new home

The 37-foot Japanese Kibo laboratory arrived at its final home Tuesday on the international space station, while the shuttle Discovery recovered a sensor boom critical to inspect its thermal tiles Tuesday.

The Kibo lab will be opened today by Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, beginning an era of Japanese partnership at the space station.

The space station's two Russian residents will work today on the space station's toilet; the shuttle crew hand-delivered a new pump for the malfunctioning commode.

New York

Spitzer case madam pleads guilty

Cecil Suwal, who helped run the prostitution ring in the scandal that brought down former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, pleaded guilty to a pair of federal conspiracy charges Tuesday and called her former business "disgusting."

Prosecutors portrayed Suwal, 23, in an indictment as the manager behind the Emperors Club V.I.P. escort service, a confident madam who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prostitutes and controlled shell companies used to hide the profits. Clients paid up to $5,500 an hour.

She pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and conspiring to promote prostitution. Her attorney suggested she was led into the business by her boyfriend, Mark Brener, 62, the escort service's suspected ringleader.

Spitzer hasn't been charged, but he apologized and resigned March 12, shortly after the case became public.

San Angelo, Texas

Sect leader's child gets extra protection

A 16-year-old girl who, her lawyers said, was sexually abused at the ranch run by the polygamous sect led by her father, Warren S. Jeffs, was given added legal protections Tuesday by a district-court judge who barred any contact between her and Jeffs.

The ruling came as more children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) continued to go home to their parents from state foster care.

The order's language puts the focus of the investigation of the group, which split with the Mormon church over plural marriage, onto Jeffs, who is serving a sentence of 10 years to life after his conviction in Utah last year of forcing an underage girl in his sect to marry against her will.

The new court order does not accuse Jeffs of abusing his daughter, who was released to her mother. But the order bars the girl from having "any contact, in any form," with Jeffs and another man, Raymond Jessop. The lawyers in the case declined to explain who Jessop is or his relationship to the girl.

Also

The San Francisco Medical Examiner says Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, who was killed by an escaped zoo tiger six months ago, had marijuana and alcohol in his system. The toxicology report was included with an autopsy that concluded Sousa died of "blunt force injuries of the head and neck."

Seattle Times news services